The Art and Science of Trust Building

Trust is not a given — it’s earned. 

In this episode, Eric and Jonathan explore how trust is shifting away from institutions and toward relationships, and why that’s reshaping the way nonprofits and social impact organizations must operate.

You’ll gain insights on:

• The hidden power of impact storytelling and why nonprofits often overlook it.
• The five pillars of trust backed by science—and how to apply them.
• Why relationships are overtaking institutions as trust-builders.
• The surprising tension between vulnerability and expertise for leaders.
• Practical strategies to foster trust internally with your team and externally with your supporters.

This episode will challenge your assumptions about trust and help you build stronger, more authentic connections — whether you're a nonprofit leader, social enterprise founder, or someone passionate about creating lasting impact.

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Introduction

• Eric and Jonathan introduce the theme: Why trust isn’t a safe assumption anymore.

[01:33] Declining Trust in Institutions

• A startling stat: Only 22% of Americans trust the federal government (2024).
• Nonprofits are more trusted than many institutions—but trust is still declining.

[02:38] The Art of Trust Building

• How “first impressions” of your brand—like your website or emails—shape trust.
• Subconscious cues that determine whether someone engages or walks away.

[05:08] Micro vs. Macro Trust

• Smaller organizations thrive on personal relationships, but big brands often have institutional trust built over time.
• Why your brand must back up individual relationships with authentic messaging.

[08:10] Where Is Trust Going?

• Trust is shifting from organizations to relationships.
• Why larger digital-first organizations may face unique challenges in this new trust dynamic.

[12:01] Impact Storytelling: The Trust Superpower

• Why nonprofits underinvest in storytelling—and why it’s their most powerful trust-building tool.
• Balancing emotional stories with transparent statistics and outcomes.

[13:50] The Science of Trust

• The 5 pillars of trust: reliability, transparency, competence, vulnerability, and empathy.
• Why setting expectations is key to being perceived as reliable and trustworthy.

[24:56] Internal Trust with Teams

• Building trust within your staff through recognition, autonomy, and support.
• How to find the right balance between freedom and structure for different employees.

[33:57] Leadership Vulnerability

• When—and how—to show vulnerability as a leader without undermining trust.
• The importance of intentionality and transparency when connecting with your team.

[37:48] Final Thoughts

• Trust is an ongoing process, not a finish line. It’s an art and a science—and it deserves your full attention.

Notable Quotes:

• "Trust is never automatic. You can’t just assume people trust your organization—it has to be earned." — Eric Ressler [00:00]
• "Trust is shifting from organizations to relationships. It’s being built face-to-face, one interaction at a time." — Jonathan Hicken [07:15]
• "Impact storytelling is one of the biggest ways to build trust, yet so many organizations fail to give it the attention it deserves." — Eric Ressler [12:01]
• "You can’t overpromise and underdeliver—it’s a recipe for losing trust faster than you can rebuild it." — Eric Ressler [15:44]
• "Trust requires balancing transparency and vulnerability with demonstrating competence and expertise. That’s the real art of leadership." — Jonathan Hicken [20:49]

Resources:

• Colleen Dilenschneider
• Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024
• Article - Nonprofits, Fundraising Success Depends on the Strength of Your Website
• Article - Quality Over Quantity: A Content Strategy to Stand Apart
• Article - The #1 Mistake Social Impact Organizations Make in Their Digital Storytelling

Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:00]:

Sometimes people think about trust, but I think oftentimes people kind of assume that they're just going to be trusted. 

Jonathan Hicken [00:08]:

I think a lot of that trust is being gained or lost between people. Your brand has to back up those conversations if the trust is moving somewhere else. I think the trust is moving to relationships and away from organizations and institutions.

Eric Ressler [00:24]:

I consistently see a lack of proper time and attention going into impact storytelling, and this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest way to build trust with your community. 

Jonathan. Today we're going to talk about the art and science of trust building specifically for social impact organizations. And I think this is something that leaders think a lot about, but often what I actually hear leaders talk about is wanting to build support, support from their community. And I think sometimes people think about trust, but I think oftentimes people assume that they're just going to be trusted. And I think that is not a safe assumption to make today. There's actually been a massive decline in trust in institutions, especially as of late. Here's kind of a scary stat as of 2024, only 22% of Americans report trusting the federal government to do what is right almost all the time or most of the time to be determined, how that changes over the next four years.

[01:33]:

But I think beyond that, general trust in institutions is down across the board. If you look at trust in mainstream media, trust in higher education, trust in science, in health, in medical institutions across the board, we just don't trust these institutions in the same way that we used to. And we can argue about whether that's good or bad. I particularly or personally think it's not good. And I think that there are reasons that we should be critical of some of these institutions, but the answer is not to just throw them away and instead trust random podcasters like us. But I think there is some silver lining here in some of these studies. Trust in nonprofits was actually still down, but not down to the same degree that some trust in some of these other institutions has resulted in. But I still think this is a huge issue that we need to be aware of in the social impact space, and I'm hoping that we can unpack that a little bit today.

Jonathan Hicken [02:34]:

I trust this is going to be a great episode.

Eric Ressler [02:38]:

We're into dad pun territory. This is getting bad. Okay, so let's talk about the art of trust building and then we can get into the science of trust building. So I think about the art of trust building if you're a social impact organization, really being about a few key things, and I actually think a lot of this comes down to gut level instincts that people have about your organization. I think we under index how important the surface level or the nonverbal so to speak, communication is from social impact organizations. For example, when someone lands on your website, what's that first impression that they get? Is the website clunky? Does it look well designed? Is the messaging clear? Is there social proof on the site in your social channels or your emails? Are they constructed in a way that feels consistent and trustworthy? These kinds of nonverbal, sub subconscious communications, I think they have a huge impact on how we assess whether or not to even pay attention to an organization, let alone assess how trustworthy they are.

Jonathan Hicken [03:46]:

I think a lot of trust is, especially for nonprofits or social impact organizations who are the smaller scale within their community, I think a lot of that trust is being gained or lost between people

Eric Ressler [04:00]:

Now

Jonathan Hicken [04:01]:

That might not apply to national social impact organizations. And I think the discussion around the messaging and how you're presenting yourself online absolutely matters. My organization is a community regional oriented organization and I think our trust is gained and lost through human to human interactions, at least in the public spaces. You think about parks and zoos and libraries and aquariums and all those, there's some research out by Colleen Dill Schneider, who's awesome thought leader in our space, and she just put out an article that reinforces that that face-to-face interaction with people is the single biggest determinant of whether or not somebody has a good experience at your institution. And I also think about the conversations that people are having when they go home and talking with their friends and think, do they enjoy working at their social impact organization? So I do wonder, right, I do wonder why is that trust being lost, where it's being lost and if it has something to do with the nature of your organization or the size of your organization. Are you seeing any differences yourself and your client

Eric Ressler [05:08]:

Base? Yeah, I mean I definitely think in general, and this is really interesting, we're going right here right away because trust happens in more than one place and I can't remember the exact statistics, but from the same study it was shown that larger institutions in the nonprofit space specifically had higher levels of trust. I think trust happens on a micro level and it also happens at a macro level. So what you're describing and coming from the perspective of a smaller local organization, a lot of trust is built through partnerships and individual conversations and interpersonal relationships, but your brand has to back up those conversations. And we talked about this before around how to live your brand values in previous episodes. And so I really think that all of this is either working towards building or not building or even degrading trust. If you come out with a brand message for example, or a campaign that positions your organization in a certain way or makes a certain set of claims or talks about your impact in a certain way and it's not real or authentic or credible, of course that is going to hurt your brand reputation and your trust and your credibility.

[06:19]:

If you say one thing, if you make a promise as a brand that you stand for something that you're working towards something and then you don't come through in a way that your supporters expect you to, there's a dissonance there that is really essentially at the end of the day a lack of integrity. And I think that that is often how people as humans, we are built to constantly assess the trust and really probably even more deeply the safety of any given relationship that we have, whether that relationship is with a person or an organization or an institution. And so I think that so much of trust at the end of the day really comes down to authenticity, credibility, integrity, these buzzwords that you hear. But then you need to figure out how do those concepts trickle down to the real world everyday actions that I take as a leader or even just a staff person at a social impact organization.

Jonathan Hicken [07:15]:

When you shared the statistic about trust being lost in these institutions, I asked myself, where's that trust going? Is this a zero sum game? Is the trust just being lost or is the trust moving somewhere else? And if the trust is moving somewhere else, I think the trust is moving to relationships and away from organizations and institutions. And so all the more reason I think no matter the scale of your organization that the relationships that you are building or the champions that you're building or the advocates that you're building, the voices and the people on the ground who are having conversations with friends and families and neighbors, that's where I think that's where that trust is being built and where that trust is going. So I actually think this might be a more challenging problem for larger digital first organizations.

Eric Ressler [08:10]:

Yeah, it's interesting. I hear what you're saying and I do agree to some degree, and if we look at, for example, what's happening in the media space where trust in mainstream media is being replaced by trust with individuals with a microphone or a video camera, and we could talk about the pros and cons of that, I think we might be able to apply that same logic to how people are assessing the credibility of any given organization as well. But it does run contrary to some of the data around the bigger brands have more trust. And I think maybe what it really comes down to in that case is that those brands have built and earned that trust over time. So we think about some of these international relief organizations like the Red Cross for example, and they have generally good brand trust and brand value.

[08:59]:

But this also makes me think about recent things that happened with a huge lack of trust in FEMA during some of the recent hurricanes when this podcast episode is being recorded. And I think that's just a point that you can't just hang onto that trust and expect it to last forever when culture is changing so rapidly. So I think that you're onto something interesting here around the trust balance being recalibrated in terms of how people assess the credibility and the trustworthiness of any given organization. To go a little deeper on that, I think what it really comes down to is people are tired of the institution speak, and I think this is a big problem in politics and we've seen the results of what that has led to recently with the 2024 election. I think one of the big reasons that Trump has the appeal that he does is because he doesn't speak like a politician and a large amount of people in the country are tired of being talked to in political speak. I think there's some truth to that in the nonprofit and social impact space too that I've observed is that oftentimes nonprofit organizations have that kind of nonprofit industrial complex that nonprofits speak. That sounds good if you're kind of deep in the social impact space, but when you're trying to reach everyday, people just might not resonate. It might be working against trust. So yeah, I mean I think we're in a really fluid place right now.

Jonathan Hicken [10:40]:

We could spend all day talking about trust in this country and trust in institutions. And what I'm taking away is that this really is an art, and that's what you were getting at is there's an art to trust building and it deserves more conversation and more research.

Eric Ressler [10:55]:

Yeah, I think so. And before we move into the science, there's one more thing that I think is really important that I put in the art category for social impact organizations, which is effective impact storytelling, which is something that you hear all the time in the space, we're all talking about it, but I consistently see a lack of proper time and attention going into impact storytelling. And this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest way to build trust with your community. Because if you think about a partner, a donor, a volunteer who supports your cause, believes in your mission or is a customer, if you're a social enterprise, their return on their investment in time, energy or resources into your organization is they want to see progress on the mission, they want to see traction and they want that to be clear. And so if I'm a supporter of an organization and I am giving them my trust in one form of another and then I'm not getting a return on investment or that value, I'm going to start to lose trust and they're going to start to lose credibility because I'm going to start to think, well, what's actually happening here?

[12:01]:

I'm not seeing progress. Are they making a difference at all at the end of the day? And I think that there's more than one way to do social impact storytelling. Some people are more motivated by personal stories. I think most people, frankly, even people who think they aren't are, and of course statistics as well, so transparency around financials and all that kind of stuff. But that impact storytelling I think is a really important part of it. And it is an art, right? It is a creative act and you need to think about it in that way in my opinion. But let's go into the science of trust because this is something that is actually studied by real scientists, not us. And I learned a lot in prep for this episode around what actually are the building blocks of trust from a scientific standpoint. And there's some really, I think interesting and potentially even unintuitive answers to that question.

[12:49]:

So one of the most important elements of building trust is reliability and consistency. And when I learned this, it made a lot of sense because in certain ways I think we could actually frame this entire conversation around trust through the metaphor of interpersonal or personal relationships. If you think about a good friend, do you want a good friend to be reliable and consistent, or do you want a good friend to be unreliable and inconsistent? Of course, you want your friend to be reliable and consistent, but I think oftentimes in the social impact space, we have a goal of being reliable, of being consistent, but then things don't go according to plan. So if you think about how we show up in the community, how we do our communications, whatever our actions are that we're doing to build trust, to build credibility, to build relationships, if we don't do those reliably, if we don't do those consistently, then we are subconsciously communicating to our supporters that we are not trustworthy.

Jonathan Hicken [13:50]:

I have a friend on either side of the spectrum, which I think actually reliability and consistency is on the spectrum of expectations. So am I setting the expectation? And this is where I go into with my friends, I've got a friend that never commits to anything and he wants to keep his options open at all times. And then I have other friends that are always like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do everything. And then they don't show up half the time. So there's kind of this spectrum of expectation setting and where your follow through falls within that expectation setting. And as an organization, you got to kind of be aware of that spectrum too. You don't want to over commit to the work. You also don't want to under commit to the work. In either case, you need to be delivering on what you commit to. That's the reliability part. The consistency part is the pace is the drumbeat.

Eric Ressler [14:41]:

I find the framing around setting expectations to be really intriguing, and I think about that a lot in terms of working with clients and building trust with clients, is I want to make sure that our expectations are aligned around what we're going to deliver when we will deliver it by how much it will cost to deliver those outcomes and be really upfront and transparent about that. And I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years. If you set expectations too high to win a new relationship or a new partnership, and then you can't deliver on those expectations reliably and consistently, that is a disaster. And in general, that's a really bad way to build trust and credibility, and you're going to just let people down and disappoint them. The next key principle for trust building based on science is transparency and honesty. We touched on this a little bit when we were talking about impact storytelling, but I think maybe this is actually the one that people feel whether or not they are justified in this feeling.

[15:44]:

They feel like this is where institutions have let them down, is what I've observed in culture recently, is that there hasn't been honesty, there hasn't been transparency in mainstream media even throughout the pandemic, which I think we could debate back and forth about how transparent and how honest various institutions were at different times. And I think just to be clear, I think it's really hard to do public health messaging and communications. And I think that certain institutions like the CDC, my belief is that they had good faith in all of their communications, but in hindsight, they probably would've done some things differently around how they messaged and communicated different stages of the pandemic. And of course it was a rapidly evolving situation. But I think this is the sense that I get is that a lot of people don't feel like they can trust some of these institutions largely because they feel like they're dishonest, whether or not they actually are dishonest or are as dishonest as people feel like they are.

Jonathan Hicken [16:45]:

I think we got to take the conversation away from the institution and down to the individual leader level for this particular one. And what I mean by that is there's an element of vulnerability in what you're talking about where you need to be vulnerable about the health of your organization or the effectiveness of your organization. And that starts with leaders. And I think the leaders often need to set the tone on what vulnerability, institutional vulnerability looks like. It's really hard when you're doing social impact work where the stakes are high and people's lives are on the line. It's really hard to look into a news camera and say, we're not getting the job done right now. That's a really hard thing to do.

[17:26]:

So our natural gut instinct as executive directors is to spin it, and we do that, and a lot of us are really good at that. We need to get that next donation. We need to get that next grant. So we're going to tell the story that's going to get us there. The problem is, is that there's the other side of that coin, and that's being vulnerable with what's working and what's not, and being able to look at yourself in the mirror and admit those things and then in kind of an even more scary way is admit those things outwardly. It's so much easier said than done.

Eric Ressler [18:06]:

The next pillar of trust building from a scientific perspective is demonstrating competence and expertise. And I think this is especially true for nonprofits and social impact organizations, and this is again, tying back into that impact storytelling. This is something I actually think about a lot, and I think a lot of nonprofit organizations and nonprofit leaders don't consider themselves to be experts or don't think about themselves as experts, but they really are, and this is odd to say because a lot of social impact organizations and leaders and employees are literally experts in their field category experts, scientists, researchers, maybe even come from the policy and advocacy space, whatever it is, but they assume that people don't care as much about their cause as they do, or even sometimes the opposite. So what I've experienced is there's a lot of really interesting stories that our clients will tell us, and my first reaction is, why aren't you telling your community about this awesome story?

[19:05]:

This is incredible. And they're like, oh, they won't care about that. It's like, yes, they will. And I think that we sometimes forget in this space that even your most diehard supporters are not nearly as on the pulse of whatever issue you're working on as you are because you are doing this every single day and you have a unique vantage point because of that. And so demonstrating that expertise and being essentially kind of like a newscaster on what's new for your issue area, where are the new challenges? What are the new obstacles? What are the new opportunities? Your supporters want to hear that. So I think this is a good way to build trust and also a good way to just deepen relationships and provide more value to your community.

Jonathan Hicken [19:49]:

I'm experiencing this real time because I'm shifting my organization away from a pure marine science storytelling to more of a coastal science and solutions style storytelling. And so in doing that, we need to tell stories of what's going on in the world of solutions and scientific solutions to the response to the impacts of climate change. And it really takes time is the point I'm going to get at is you've got to bang that drum and it goes back to the reliability and the consistency point. You can't just be an expert once. You have to continually bang that drum and remind your audience and remind your community or your participants that you know what you're doing. This is actually interestingly, sort of in contrast to the last point around vulnerability and failure. How do you balance demonstrating expertise and confidence and also be vulnerable and transparent and honest at the same time? That is maybe the golden question, the million dollar question.

Eric Ressler [20:49]:

I think that's the art, right? And the art and the science need to balance one another because I think there's actually been a huge trend towards vulnerability, at least in terms of leadership and throughout a lot of the culture change that's happened as of late. And I think I've experienced situations where some people take that so far that it does degrade trust. I think if it feels like vulnerability is almost a performative act, which in certain cases I do think it is, then I think we have a pretty good sense of this. Our physiological and our psychological instruments for picking up on these subtle nonverbal things is actually, I think really advanced probably from an evolutionary perspective. And I think we're getting better and better at sussing out bullshit across the board, whether that's cause marketing and messaging that's inauthentic or greenwashing or whatever it is, or fake vulnerability.

[21:49]:

So I think we need to find a balance for each leader in each culture, in each organization. But yeah, it is interesting that some of these different scientific pillars can be indirect contrast with one another, and that even leads nicely into the last one, which is empathy and understanding. And I think this can go too far also, but it is a really important element to building trust. And if we go back to the metaphor of how you build trust with a good friend or a family member or someone in your personal life, a lot of that is empathy and understanding and being there and hearing something hard that your friend is going through or being there in a way that shows that you're listening and that you care and that you're putting yourself in your friend's shoes. And I think that this is also true when it comes to understanding your supporters. We've talked about this before. Why don't people understand how important this cause is? How can they not see it? Well, if you approach that instead of from a critical standpoint through a lens of empathy and curiosity, that's a more constructive approach to building understanding of your supporters. Then ultimately also trust with them.

Jonathan Hicken [23:00]:

You talked about performance, and I think another place where this shows up a lot is in collaboration and partnership. And I think that that is a place to gain trust, excuse me, to gain trust through empathy and understanding is through strong partnerships, through strong collaborations though that being all the rage in our sector, a lot of people don't do it very well. And so it becomes a performance. And I actually think that you can really degrade trust if you aren't doing that partnership and collaboration because you're kind of signaling that you care and that you understand and that you empathize. But when the work gets down to it and you kind of ignore those contributions from a partner or collaborator, you're going to hurt your trust.

Eric Ressler [23:48]:

So performative partnerships is another way to hurt trust. I completely agree. Let's talk about building trust with internal teams, because I think this is equally important, especially as leaders. We need to build trust not just externally with our supporters, but also we need our team to trust us. We need our team to trust that we are moving the organization in the right direction. So there's a couple elements that I've thought of over the years, and I'd be really curious to hear your take on this as well, around how to build trust with your internal team and your staff. One of these is recognizing excellence, which is another fancy way of just saying celebrating wins. So we've talked about this in previous episodes, but one way to build trust not just with any individual but with your team at large, is to elevate people when they've come through and contributed in a meaningful way, in a way that shines brighter than usual in a way that's helping to move your mission forward. So how do you think about this element of recognizing excellence for your team?

Jonathan Hicken [24:56]:

Recognizing excellence in an executive director role is all about positive reinforcement of the behaviors and the results that the business or the organization needs. And so you identify who is living those behaviors, and it's like we both have five-year-olds. We celebrate the things that they do great that we want to see more of. And I don't mean that in a condescending way, I'm making a comparison to a five-year-old, but really I think as human beings, that's one of our signals, especially in social settings of how to show up, is to see what's being praised. And so for me, that's how I think about it, is the things that I'm praising or the things that I want others to adopt.

Eric Ressler [25:42]:

Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think we've talked about this before, but in a non demeaning way, a lot of being parents and going through that experience really makes you realize how much it is directly applicable to adult relationships too. We're still all just a bunch of kids walking around in adult suits right now, at the end of the day, at least from a psychological perspective. Another interesting one I think is this concept of a challenge stress, which is a fancy way of saying giving people assignments or responsibilities that are going to be challenging, but doable. And this gives trust, I think in an interesting way, you're basically setting people up for difficult success because if you think about someone being in a role where everything's just super easy and it's like autopilot, that doesn't work for most people. Some people are maybe happy with that and don't get bored, but I think a lot of people start to feel stagnant in that role.

[26:42]:

And a challenge, stress is a way to make them authentically achieve growth as an individual. So the idea is that if you give someone a challenge that's undoable because the situation or the conditions aren't right, or it's just something that's literally not within the capabilities of an individual, that's just frustrating. If you have this task ahead of you and it's literally impossible, you're not able to achieve it. But if you help people stretch, if you reach a new state or achieve something that they didn't think they would be able to, but you saw in them that they were able to, that is a way to build trust because you're showing your employee that you can help support them, whether you're doing the work or not, you're providing the conditions and the growth opportunity to allow them to actually make a positive difference in their own career, in their own personal development, not just for the organization.

Jonathan Hicken [27:36]:

Yes, I think that works for some people. I think it maybe works for fewer people than you do. I think it's really an individual sort of an individual personality or even life circumstance factor there, whether or not someone wants to be challenged in that way. I've actually, as a leader, I've had to learn to recognize it's my natural instinct to attempt to set up those challenge stressors. And I've learned even in my current role, that doesn't always work. It can just be stressors for some people, and that can come down to all sorts of life circumstances. Maybe the individual just doesn't have a lot of brain space to put into a challenge at work because something really hard is going on at home.

[28:26]:

There's that circumstance exists. What I do think is pretty consistent across the board and relates to this is that as leaders, we have to set our teams up for success. We need to create the conditions for someone to be successful, understand what they're being asked to do extremely clearly, and understand exactly what success looks like and know where they stand at any given time on that spectrum. That to me, I think is a version, maybe a higher level on the pyramid of what you're describing for some people may be a challenge for other people, it may just be execution on a singular expectation.

Eric Ressler [29:04]:

Yeah, I hear that. And I think that going back to some of the scientific principles of trust building, we think about empathy. We think about transparency. Practicing those things will allow you to right size what a challenge test looks like or what a challenge stress looks like, rather. Another one that I think is really interesting is giving your team some level of autonomy and flexibility. And I think this goes both ways actually, in the sense that this is something that we've done a lot at Cosmic in that we work a four day work week. We have pretty schedules. We're a fully remote team, and so I have a lot of trust in my team to do what's right and to not micromanage their hours or how they even break down their activities and work to some degree. And I didn't get there right away in the early days especially, had a much more involved managerial style.

[30:05]:

Largely, we were all sitting in the same room, and I was just looking over people's shoulders and curious about how far along they were on any given project. And so I've had to give that up a lot in our transition into a fully remote team. But what I've learned is that when you trust the right people and give the right people that level of autonomy and flexibility with their schedule, it pays back in dividends. And I'll be blunt about this, it has to be the right people because you give some people this autonomy and this flexibility and they will take advantage of it.

Jonathan Hicken [30:40]:

I think this also exists on the spectrum in terms of the individuals on the team. Yes, I do think that offering somebody agency and freedom to do their work is really important. And I actually as a leader, I err on that side maybe a little too much where I may be giving too much freedom without enough structure. So I've had to learn to build in more structure, partly because I've learned that some individuals thrive with just a singular direction and a singular outcome that they're supposed to hit and let them run wild. Other people need a little bit more structure and support along the way, either because they're learning a new job or they thrive from that verbal input and back and forth. That's part of what their need is as a colleague. So one of the things I really like to do is if I am setting somebody up to take the reins on a project and have a ton of freedom, is to define exactly when I need to hear from them. So I need to hear from you at this point, this point and this point, and I need, come to me if you come across this question or that question. Otherwise, bring me options. Bring me ideas. I'm here for you and go, that's one of the techniques I used to build structure for someone who needs that within a job that comes with a lot of agency.

Eric Ressler [31:58]:

Yeah, no, that tracks for me too. And in reflection, I do think this has to be case dependent on someone's particular learning style. So even thinking about a more junior level employee versus a more senior level employee. So you have to use your discretion with this. But I do agree, and I've seen situations where if people don't have enough direction or that scaffolding of support, they can feel, they can have almost the kind of open canvas problem or blank canvas problem where it's just like, I don't even know where to start. So having some level of support and structure, but also some level of autonomy, I think we can all relate to either an experience or hearing an experience from a friend of someone who's been micromanaged and they feel like they don't have any of that flexibility even to do personal things that need to happen in the workweek or whatever, or that autonomy to have some agency over how the work is done, in my opinion, can be a recipe for burnout, especially for certain types.

[32:56]:

So let's go to a topic we talked about in brief and think about it more from a leadership perspective. And this is showing vulnerability. And I think as a leader, this can be difficult, and I think I've struggled with this at certain times because there's this sense of wanting to be a confident and strong and assured leader and not making mistakes as a leader, and that kind of standard approach that you think about when you think about a leader. And then there's also this balance there where you don't want to be this inhuman person. I think everyone knows that leaders are people too, and we have our own struggles that are personal or professional. And I think actually a lot of leaders struggle a lot emotionally, mentally because of stress or whatever it is, even mental health. And so how do you balance that leadership with vulnerability and even personal bonding with your team?

Jonathan Hicken [33:57]:

You said the word mistake. I think that's a really good place to start because you can admit a mistake and plot a path towards correcting that mistake or learning from that mistake. I think starting, if you are a leader that struggles to show vulnerability in your work, I think it's a really easy place to start is just identify a mistake that you've made and talk about what you learned from that and how you're going to correct that and talk about it openly. The other thing I would say is be really mindful about how and when you're showing your vulnerability.

[34:27]:

And this is kind of going back to the performative vulnerability part. I will show vulnerability oftentimes in one-on-one check-ins where it's a little bit more private and there's an opportunity for me to open up A, because I feel more comfortable with that. But B, there's a little bit of a bonding that comes with an individual sitting in front of you saying, I'm trusting you with something really, really precious, and I'm trusting you to care for that thing. And that is a really powerful bonding moment. I might not do that same sharing at all staff meeting or in front of a hundred people at a presentation. So I think there's an element of just being mindful about, and also the why you're being vulnerable thought needs to go into it. We can't treat our teams and our organizations as our personal therapists. That I think that can be really damaging actually.

Eric Ressler [35:26]:

I agree. And I think that there's been times, as I've been leading my team at cosmic where I've made a choice to not share something with the group that probably in certain ways I could see helping and maybe I wasn't showing up at my best because I had things going on personally outside of work that were affecting my ability to be a good leader, to be a good creative director. And at the same time, it's like, how much of your baggage do you want to air in front of the whole team? Especially when a big and important in my opinion, job of leadership is to stay motivated and to show up the way you expect your staff to show up, which is not always easy because all just people at the end of the day, and we all have our own struggles, and there have been times throughout the last 15 years of running cosmics that have been really hard for me, and I've had to show up and I hate to say it, but just put a mask on and just pretend that things were okay when they weren't.

[36:27]:

And I think most of the time I made the right call there, and there were probably some times where I could have tactfully been a little bit more transparent. And I do think about that a lot when something's happening personally, that's bringing me down for whatever reason, or even things are just kind of crazy outside of work that's adding just extra stress. And often I'll kind of catch myself after the fact realizing I really could have handled that better. And so I've been trying to your point about making mistakes to just follow up with folks, if I feel like I didn't come through in the way that I should have always in a one-to-one and just say, Hey, I'm sorry, how things went just now that wasn't on you, or whatever the reason might be, or is there anything we need to work through and just have that kind of transparent conversation. And people are usually really receptive to that. I've also found that oftentimes people are like, whatcha talking about? There's nothing. It's in your head, but not always either. So I think that, again, an art and a science, there's a balance to it

Jonathan Hicken [37:25]:

And it, it's no different than your friendships or your family. I mean, if you work with people that you trust and you respect and you for the most part appreciate seeing eight hours a day, five days a week, or in your case four days a week, then trust your gut. Trust your instincts on this. There's no singular playbook that's going to be a one size fits all.

Eric Ressler [37:48]:

Yeah, so we could go on forever about trust. There's a lot to unpack here in terms of how you build trust with your community, with your team. I think this is a pretty good primer. Lots more to think about. If listeners have any further questions or follow ups or examples of how they've built trust, please share it with us. Until then, Jonathan, thanks for this conversation. 

Jonathan Hicken

Take care.